Q: This is the time of the year that drives my husband crazy. He cannot get into his fields, which he loves to do, and it is often too cold for him to work on his machinery.
However, it is never too cold for his anxiety, and he spends most of his time in late winter and early spring worrying about next year’s crop. He does not sleep well, he eats far too much junk food and he is not pleasant to me and our two children.
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I know that he regrets it and I would like to see him make positive changes, but we are not sure how to go about it. What do you suggest?
A: Depending on the severity of his anxiety, your husband might want to make an appointment to see his family physician and discuss medication to reduce the anxiety.
However, pills alone cannot resolve anxiety. Usually the anxious person has to do personal work before he will start to relax and enjoy the season.
One of the options for your husband is something called mindfulness, which you can look up on the internet.
Mindfulness helps people deal with anxiety and works under the assumption that when people are anxious they pay too much attention to their fears and not enough to what is going on in the world.
That is one reason we have so many accidents. Anxious people get lost in their own thoughts, so much so that they do not notice hazards when they are driving.
That is also why young people fail courses they are studying. As students, they get scared and anxious and do not properly focus on what their instructors are saying.
Anxiety is habit forming. Stopping the anxiety is likely as hard, if not harder, than quitting smoking.
However, it is a habit that needs to be challenged. This is where mindfulness can come into the picture.
Instead of worrying about the future, mindful people pay attention to the total experience of the moment, observing in detail what confronts them, being fully aware of their feelings in that moment, paying attention to their breathing, whether it is rapid or relaxed, and considering aches and pains that are distracting them from their concentration.
We speak in generalities. We talk about trees and cars and houses and unless we have a vested interest, we leave it at that.
A cow is a cow is a cow, and lots of cows are like other cows, unless you are a rancher and then some cows are like some other cows.
To practise mindfulness, look beyond the generalities into the peculiar characteristics of whatever it is you are observing.
What do you see about the morning’s frost that makes this morning different than any other morning? What is unique about one particular rose?
Taking time to study and observe a moment or an isolated experience, studying it for what it has to offer and checking your physiological and emotional responses to it, is mindfulness.
If your husband is able to take five or 10 minutes, four or five times a day, to practise mindfulness, he just might kick that habit of anxiety and start to enjoy life more than he does now.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor from Saskatchewan. Contact: jandrews@producer.com.
